Over the years, there has been a dramatic change in the expectations of people who purchase online; thus, impacting user experience principles followed by businesses drastically.

When the concept of the online market was in the beginning stage, no one knew what exactly to expect from these online merchants. However, today, customers are well-informed and trained as well in terms of accepting sellers.

With customers becoming smarter, search engines have improved their algorithms to display information on the basis of what users require. As a result, everything related to internet business has evolved to make experienced customer-centric.

Coming to your business, irrespective of what consumers are expecting, it’s important to adapt as per the trends so as to provide fantastic user experience to the target audience. Owing to this, combining the principle of user experience (UX) and strategies of search engine optimization (SEO) can provide better results.

So, let’s understand more about why, being a business owner or an SEO expert, you should be bothering about UX principles and the ways you can implement to learn how to set up a business website.

Basic User Experience Principles:

One of the primary problems here can be that UX analysis doesn’t come as a part of the skill set of SEO. However, UX is also much more than just concentrating on website visitors. So, if you wish to get the best out of what you have to offer, understanding these basic principles can give you a better start.

1- Analytics Data & Account:

Most of the times, when it comes to SEO, people leave analytics behind. And, that may bring you down affectedly. Whether it’s for better user experience or SEO ranking, having reliable and accurate data is something you must not miss upon.

You must understand that qualitative analytics data is an essential aspect of user experience. And then, you’d also require correct tools to meet the analytics requirements. If you don’t have a significant analytics system, you may receive data from all directions and sources. This isn’t going to help you but add more to your confusion.

Therefore, ensure that you have centralized data, integrated into only one system. Once done, it’s recommended to audit the website analytics to ensure that the data you’re acquiring can be used to achieve different goals. The audit can also help discover and fix several other issues, like self-referrals, 404 errors, events tracking, cross-domain, property settings, and much more.

2- Effective Analytics Metrics & Engagement:

Another one of the vital user experience principles is to track the engagement and analytics metrics. For this, you’d have to emphasize three essential parameters:

Exit Rate

Bounce Rate

Time on Page

By providing adequate user experience, your goal should be to enhance these metrics to such an extent that they provide sufficient engagement level. With people spending less time on your website or bouncing back from your pages, all Google assesses is how visitors are leaving your site and finding better alternatives. That’s what Google is going to factor while deciding the rank of your site.

Therefore, as an SEO expert and business owner, your job is to understand the reason behind the high bounce rate along with other decreasing metrics and how you can improve it.

3- Qualitative & Effective Data:

While quantitative data, collected from analytics tools is essential, you must not overlook the worth of qualitative data at any cost. When talking about the latter, it’s necessary to understand how customers are engaging with your brand. Therefore, concentrating upon their feedback can help you to a great extent by reducing website errors, catering to pain points of potential customers, and increasing engagement – all of which is good for SEO.

To execute this step successfully, begin asking your customers their feedback on your products or services. For this, what you can do is come up with polls and surveys to let the potential customers answer transparently. With their response, you’ll be able to get an insight into their minds. In this way, figuring out what’s wrong and how to fix it will help you efficiently.

4- Consistency:

When talking about important user experience principles for SEO, it’s difficult to miss consistency. There are several reasons that make consistency important. To begin with, it decreases learning, meaning that your customers wouldn’t have to brainstorm upon every new representation of the products that you post if they’re already well-acknowledged with your brand.

With this process, you’ll be able to get a quick and faster response from your customers. When it comes to analytics data, consistency represents lower exit rates and bounce rates.

Best Practices for UX & SEO:

In reality, you don’t have to be an expert in UX designing to match the paces with such an experience that would complement the SEO efforts as well. However, before you dive into learning some best practices, you must keep in mind that not every technique may fulfill your goals and you may have to keep experimenting, depending upon your potential customers and the industry.

Having said that, let’s understand specific tips and best practices that may help you gain satisfactory results.

Keyword Research:

For almost every business owner and SEO expert, the primary starting point would be keyword research. To tell you the fact, this activity impacts practically every aspect of your website, right from the content to the message you want to communicate with the audience.

When you begin with this activity, you’re going to get familiar with a completely different world that exists only for keywords. Hence, you’ll have to be very particular about how you conduct this research and the kind of keywords that you choose so that you can rank higher as well as provide a better experience to your visitors.

Attracting More Clicks:

When you optimize your website, the ranking isn’t the only objective you should be following. However, one of the primary things is to get more clicks and visitors to your site. Having said that, the higher the rank you have, the more chances you get to obtain more clicks.

However, there are no compulsions and restrictions that you should follow to stand equally with your competitors when you can easily outpace them. It’s entirely possible to gain more clicks to the website in comparison with others who are ranking above you.

This can only be done by ensuring that your website catches the attention of people. It can be mainly through attractive language that would encourage them to click and visit your site. If you’re using bland language, it’s going to fetch you nothing but lousy click-through rate.

So, make sure your meta descriptions, title tags, URLs, breadcrumbs, and other similar elements have been curated well-enough.

Keep It Going:

Once you’ve achieved the target of click-through rates, understand that your job isn’t done yet. There would be a lot more to do. One thing that you must always remember is that your visitors will always be in a hurry. They wouldn’t take a lot of time just to figure out what your brand is what you’re offering.

In fact, if they won’t find what they’re looking for on your landing page, they’ll leave quickly. This means you must make sure that you’ve done everything correctly. Your visitors found something worthwhile when clicking on your site. Hence, you’d have to maintain that worth.

Don’t let them lose their interest. If they do, you’re going to lose them. So, make sure you properly optimize the following elements on the site:

Site ID

Navigation

Header Tags

Content Optimization

CTA

Wrapping Up:

Now that you’ve understood the user experience principles and how you can integrate SEO in it, now is the time to enhance your website by keeping the customer journey in mind. From the technology to your customers, everything is evolving; therefore, you must align your business with them to get more benefits.

If marketers and businesses expect to compete and gain market share in the digital space, they have to stay ahead of the curve.

This means taking note of new trends and even going so far as to adopt the most promising ones. As digital content marketing trends are constantly evolving, one can only be ready to adapt.

Now that we’re approaching 2019, it is time to evaluate the digital marketing trends that are gaining the most traction – the ones that have the most potential to change aspects of the digital marketing landscape as we know it.

1. Chatbots

Chatbots are the forefront of the digital marketing discussion.

What makes them different from fleeting trends of the past, however, is that they are poised to completely revolutionize the way businesses market their business – and for good.

Chatbots are nothing more than software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to communicate with customers. Customers can have real-time conversations with chatbots who are programmed to respond in a conversational and even personalized way.

Add to the fact that chatbots can have their own name and avatar, they are virtually indistinguishable from humans themselves.

If the best marketing is cantered around problem solving, what makes chatbots particularly powerful is the fact thatthey offer a direct line of communication between the problem and the solution, which inevitably leads to more sales.

Chatbots can ask the customer pointed questions about their particular tastes and then offer up the best possible solution. From there, the chatbot can be programmed to answer additional questions and overcome any objections.

The chatbot can even track purchase history, which businesses can then use to make offers at the right time. Pizza Hut, for example, does exactly this. They will send you timely deals from within Facebook Messenger (you can also order a pizza as well).

Of course, marketing doesn’t just end with the completed transaction. Chatbots provide a direct customer service line where customers can get prompt answers in real-time, day or night.

2. Voice Search is Changing Content and SEO

The fundamental way in which people search online is changing. Much of this has to do with the fact that a large proportion of people are now making use of voice assistants like Apple’s Siri to directly ask questions instead of actually manually typing questions in their keyboard.

This has meant that queries are also becoming much more conversational in nature.

You can also see the rise in voice search through the increasingly popularity of voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home as well.

Simply put, the rise in voice search is going to change the way digital marketing agencies approach both content and SEO. To plan for the rise in voice search, marketers and businesses will need to do some of the following:

Focus on long-tail keywords given that searches are more conversational (and question-based)

Create FAQs (that also includes those long-tail keywords)

Prioritize local SEO; a large number of local searches are voice-based, which means that marketers and businesses should make sure that they are following the best practices when it comes to local SEO. Also ensure that you claim your Google My Business listing and that you optimize your listing as well

3. Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising has been talked about for nearly 5 years, but it has only been in the last year or so that it has become a particularly hot topic.

According to eMarketer, 84% of digital display ads will be programmatic by 2019. In other words, it is worth paying attention to.

If you’re not familiar with programmatic advertising, it uses artificial intelligence to automate the process of buying ads, a process which typically involves a lot of manual work. This saves both time and money.

However, programmatic advertising also uses artificial intelligence to determine which companies will offer the best return on investment. It will also monitor ad spend.

In this way, programmatic advertising takes out much of the guesswork of campaigns of the past while increasing efficiency and saving costs all at once.

4. Visual Search

Visual search is quickly taking over various shopping areas as well. And it’s not hard to see why. With visual search, you can take a picture of a guitar you saw in a magazine and then find versions of that guitar online.

As you can see, this search behavior would immediately place someone higher up in the conversion funnel than a text-based search.

The biggest companies in the world, including both Google and Microsoft, are both investing in visual search with Google Lens being one such example.

Visual search will clearly have a lot of implications for the retail industry, but incorporating visual search into your strategy is something that nearly all businesses will need to begin thinking seriously about.

The Takeaway

Chatbots, voice search, programmatic advertising and visual search all promise to be much more than passing trends. They will either completely shake up the digital marketing space or at least be around for a long while.

Put another way, the future of digital marketing trends are worth evolving with.

While struggling being at the midst of competitive digital industry, marketers strive to come up with progressive marketing strategies.

Such strategies that can bring more customers to the site increase the rate of conversions and bring the site to the top charts.

What can be better than having an animated video when you have big goals to achieve? An Animated video can help you bring the change you want and to generate the performance you have desired. It can let you take a leap to success by investing a few bucks. All that is needed is a bit of determination to get the best quality video created by an animated video company.

Engaging

An animated video is a package full of creativity and appeal. It can effectively deliver gems of information using simplistic tricks. An animated video sketches a deep story that indulges the attention of viewers. If you want to succeed in the online world, you have to make sure that your video is captivating enough to entertain the viewers and to sustain their attention for longer.

Spread Brand Awareness

An animated video is a perfect asset to increase your brand awareness. The video can incorporate rich brand messages along with your core values. Having the appropriate use of colors and aesthetics that can reflect your level of professionalism, you can accelerate your brand’s reach. Your content present in the video will be able to trigger the emotions and create a strong bond among your customers.

Versatile

One of the biggest advantages of incorporating animated videos in your marketing campaign is approaching customers with a touch of versatility. You do not have to become a slave of any template, you can create a video from scratch and amuse your viewers. You add your own color, features, and graphics that can help in capturing attention.

Boost Online Visibility

Animated videos due to being able to deliver information effectively and quickly, entertains viewers expertly. As a viewer becomes interested to know more about a site he shows a greater likelihood to get converted and even if he does not he finds the site helpful. Due to which the search engines rank such sites among the leading one. So, just by having a simple animated video you can gain enhanced online visibility. You can be able to reach out to even those customers you never thought about dealing with.

Mobile Friendly

As a huge proportion of online users, prefer streaming and browsing through their smartphones, the need to have mobile responsive sites keep on ringing the bell of urgency. You have to get a highly responsive site or any sort of branding asset if you want to maximize your customer reach. As per the research, around 65% customers view Facebook post through cellphones and similarly, around 50% video streaming on YouTube is made through phones.

Interactive

Animated videos have the power to interact with viewers. It is something that is hard to find elsewhere. Interaction is important if you want to amuse your customers and connect them with your brand. To build a strong connection and to develop trust it is important to present you as a human. Appealing visuals along with interactive animation turns into a power-pack dose for the potential customers who cannot stop falling in love with your company and services.

It Humanizes

You can humanize your brand by using an animated video. The video gives a face and voice to your firm and allows it to stabilize the clientele. You can efficiently gather huge traffic on your site and address the common issues that your customers encounter.

Accelerates Sales

Why a customer refrains from counting on a new business or brand to shop? The prime reason lies in oblivion. The customer does not know what that brand does good and the traits of its services. Due to which it takes months to spread brand awareness and to convince customers to lay their trust in a company. However, with an animated video the thing, which takes months, can be achieved within days. You can educate your viewers and tell them in details what your company is and all about your services.

In a Nut Shell

When making an animated video the first thing to consider is to stay targeted to customer’s needs and demands. So, stay conscious and follow the inspiration and guidelines stated by experts to bring a massive productivity change in your creation.

If you want to be successful, many experts and life-hackers say you should wake up at 6 am, take a cold shower, exercise, meditate, journal and brainstorm, review and set goals, read news and industry sites, consume inspiring content, eat a protein-rich breakfast

Whew. That’s a lot to accomplish before 8 am.

I’m not sure when the dogma of morning routines began to spread, but suddenly, these mile-long checklists are everywhere?—?especially in the startup world.

Routines can be great, but I think there’s a misplaced emphasis on morning.

Everyone has different peak hours. If you want to enhance your productivity, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, or if you go for a run at 6 am or 6 pm.

Among other things, contemporary marketing is based on being able to react to users fast and precisely. For that, WebEngage provides plenty of tools that allow you to notify users on different channels, like email, the web, as well as in-app messages, encouraging them to interact with you. Thanks to the new “Journey Designer”, you can now comfortably develop sophisticated online marketing strategies using a graphical interface.

Find the Perfect Marketing Strategy Via Drag and Drop

WebEngage offers your website’s users ways to communicate directly with you. This works conventionally via feedback form, but also thanks to lots of online marketing tools. For example, you’ll know who of your shop’s visitors moved a product into the shopping cart, but didn’t buy it.

Creating a “Journey” Via Drag and Drop

The WebEngage tools let you try to convince these users to purchase the product by sending them a web-message or push notification. The new “Journey Designer” makes it significantly easier to develop a marketing strategy based on defined criteria. That’s because it quickly lets you create so-called “triggers”, meaning rules that you want to react to, followed by the according actions via drag and drop.

Reacting to Events or Segments

A “trigger” could be something like an event. Such an event can be defined on your website using the WebEngage API. Like previously mentioned, an action could be adding a product to a shopping cart. But there are tons of other events as well. Via JavaScript, you have access to the WebEngage API, letting you define any event that you want to react to later on.

As WebEngage sets up profiles for all users, it is very easy to trace back when a user has visited your website, and what he did back then. Thus, instead of reacting to a particular event, it is also possible to respond to so-called segments.

Segments: Filtering Users According to Different Factors

A segment allows you to define a particular target group, like e.g. users from a certain country, new or returning visitors. Instead of creating a segment, you can also address individual users. As you can see, there are a bunch of options when it comes to determining a trigger for an action.

Defining Actions and Addressing User Behavior

Once you’ve placed a trigger onto your working space, the next step is to add an action that you want to execute. Then, link the trigger to that action. This is done by visually drawing lines from the trigger to the action.

Creating Web Messages From Many Templates

The actions are the actual measures that you get to execute within the scope of a marketing strategy. Sending web messages would be such an action. Additionally, you think of things such as banners that are displayed on your website, or sticky headers, and sticky footers, meaning custom areas that are attached at the top or bottom of the page.

In-App Messages for Android and iOS Devices Are Possible as Well

WebEngage provides a broad range of web messages. Design, content, and target URLs are customized by you. However, the marketing journey doesn’t have to stop with the execution of an action. For each action, a follow-up action can be defined, depending on how a user reacted to the previous action.

Thus, you get to work down a diverse array of actions, depending on whether a web message was seen, or whether it was opened or closed. According to the reaction, you can chain multiple different actions, like sending an email or push notification.

While doing so, you combine actions for the website with actions for the smartphone, which are only executed within an app. You also get to communicate with your users via email or SMS.

Conditions and “Flow Control” for Complex Strategies

To allow for even more precise reactions, the “Journey Designer” offers different conditions. Depending on whether a condition was met or not, define two different paths that are executed.

Conditions Allow for the Reaction to Different Behavior

For instance, there is a condition that lets you check if a user has triggered an event or not. Use the “Journey Designer” to set up two unique chains of actions for both cases.

Of course, it is also possible to define very complex chains. Even reaching one action in different ways is doable. An action can consist of multiple connections of triggers, conditions, and other actions.

Waiting Until the Next Action is Executed Via “Flow Control.”

Last but not least, find the so-called “Flow Controls.” These allow you to make the continuation of a chain of actions dependant on the occurrence of certain factors. For example, you could make the execution of an action dependant on how much time passed since the last action. This could be hours, days, or even years.

Making an action dependant on triggering an event in a specific timeframe works just as well.

Evaluation and Statistics

Once you’ve set up your journey, all you need to do is publish it. From that point on, it is not possible to make any more changes. To do that, you need to stop your journey first.

During publication, the “Journey Designer” shows you how often triggers occur for a visitor of your website, and how often which actions are conducted. This gives you a really clear and up-to-date statistic on how your journey develops.

Published “Journey” With Statistics

Additionally, you get to download reports that you define yourself in CSV format. These contain all statistics that the “Journey Designer” can provide you with.

This statistic makes it very easy to get an overview of your marketing strategy’s success, and to potentially refine single actions.

Conclusion

The “Journey Designer” by WebEngage is a powerful marketing tool that lets you develop strategies for your online marketing ranging from simple to complex. The clear and intuitive interface offers you a smooth and easy start. The “Journey Designer” combines the many options of WebEngage in one central switch point that is easy to learn for newcomers, and always clear, even when it is used to handle complex strategies.

Eager to create your first website? Are you sure that you need one? If your answer is yes, don’t spontaneously go with WebCheap Supplier Ltd. with a full hosting for 0.99 bucks a month, but instead, read the following article first.

What do You Want to Accomplish?

Why do you want to create a website? Because everyone has one? Because you can? All of these would be pretty weak reasons, and I’m going to assume that you have a better motivation.

Do you want to run a blog that is supposed to cover a certain niche, or do you plan on selling your products over the internet? Whatever it may be, define it clearly, and focus on that goal. Don’t try to cover a little bit of everything just because there’s enough space on the internet and an added function more or less doesn’t cost more money.

No matter what your aim is, the website is the communication means to reach that goal. You know this from the archetype of all communication, the dialogue. It needs a clear structure as well, shouldn’t drift off to the left or right, and it is the most successful when it strictly follows the golden thread laid out by the goal of the dialogue.

You should build your website like this as well. Don’t let it fray out, get out of hand, or drift off into vagueness. Don’t use more words than needed, and place clear calls to action (CTA).

Who do You Want to Reach?

Who’s your target group? You probably thought you had already answered this question inside the reply to the previous question. But that would be too simplistic. When it comes to the question who you want to reach, you should take smaller steps, and not just define a more or less vague group such as teenagers between 16 and 19.

I can almost guarantee that your target group can not be defined solely by their age (or other obvious factors). Further aspects will be substantial. Work them out precisely.

Is the offer directed more towards male or female clients? Are pupils, apprentices, or students more attractive? Does your target customer need a certain amount of free income? There are lots of factors like these. The more precisely you define your target group, the more accurately will you be able to address them.

Speaking of addressing; use the language of your target audience to meet them at eye level. If this includes not sticking to all dictionary rules, then do that.

By Which Search Terms do You Want to be Found?

You actually have to ask this question before registering your internet address (URL, domain). In the best case, the most relevant search term that you wish to be found by should be part of your domain name. This way, Google thinks that your website is exceptionally relevant to this keyword, as it even appears in the URL.

Every single page of your website gets a title, a meta description, as well as an individual URL which comes as an extension of the domain name. Within these three elements is where you cover your search terms, the so-called keywords. This can definitely be a different one for each page. Then, you make sure that the corresponding keyword appears in headings, captions, and file names on the according page. This way, you have pretty much covered the area of so-called on-page SEO, the search engine optimization on the page itself.

How to Structure the Information on Your Website?

The information architecture of your site, meaning the way you make your content available regarding structure, is just as essential for the success as architecture is when building a house. For example, it would be suboptimal if the only way to reach the kitchen was through the bedroom.

In general, the navigation menu of your website should have as few items as possible. Of course, not so few that the essential areas of your site can’t be accessed. Also, I wouldn’t recommend nesting the navigation too deeply. Your visitor will get lost very quickly.

Provide clear access to the individual topics, and, when in doubt, reduce or focus your content, rather than opening the 100th menu item.

Do You Want to Build Your Site Yourself or Will You Hire a Professional?

You won’t be surprised to hear that I generally recommend to always hire a professional when it comes to creating your website, especially when it has to be built from scratch. Depending on your knowledge, or level of motivation, you can learn how to take care of the website later on. But you should leave the cornerstone to an expert, to make sure that the foundation doesn’t break. Websites are more than a few pages with pictures.

However, if your project is very small, or if you simply don’t have the financial option to hire an expert, that doesn’t mean that you should forgo a website. In that case, you’ll have to get to work yourself. Prepare for a training period, and grab the simplest tool you can find.

A while ago, we published an article that shows some beautiful stuff that can be done with a homepage builder. Recently, Wix.com has seen a massive presence on the market. We have already taken a lookat this productseveral times. You won’t go wrong with that.

Who do You Entrust With the Hosting?

If you followed my advice to hire a professional to create your website, he should help you to elegantly avoid the cliff that is selecting the appropriate web host. If you went off on your own, there are a couple of things to keep in mind that you might not fully understand yet.

The most valuable insight on this topic is the following: changing the selected web host is not easy. Thus, you shouldn’t choose a very cheap solution first, and see what happens. When in doubt, just move on.

If your website has a certain complexity, and is more than a digital business card, moving from A to B is not as simple as moving a few boxes into a new apartment. Different providers don’t only have different prices, but, above all else, entirely different performance levels.

For logical reasons, you should try to make a qualified assessment of how much traffic is to be expected at what time, and which server-side features are required. Most likely, this won’t lead to the cheapest host, and that’s a good thing.

Conclusion: Thought About Everything? Then Let’s Go!

If you went through all questions and got useful answers, you can start with the realization of your website with a clear conscience. Here at Noupe, you’ll find tons of articles to help you on your way.

To Google, the open AMP project is one of the most important endeavors of the recent past. This is about nothing less than the supremacy on the user’s mobile devices.

It goes without saying that Google refuses to let Facebook have this supremacy without a fight. It’s also clear that they can’t afford to do so from an economic point of view. Thus, it is no surprise that AMP, which also has quite a few loud-voiced critics, is tenaciously developed from milestone to milestone.

The newest cornerstone was placed a few days ago. Google’s AMP Stories are no less than a completely new method of storytelling on mobile devices. Actually, it is not really a completely new method of storytelling, but one that we haven’t seen on mobile devices yet, as the publishers were avoiding the effort of creating it.

The new element is supposed to make storytelling on mobile devices more interesting. (Screenshot: Google)

Google simplifies this process with the introduction of the new component amp-story so much, that the creation of visually appealing news formats could soon become part of the editing routine in media houses around the world. Thus, it is no surprise that these media houses are among the pioneers of the AMP Stories.

As of recently, every page operator can take their first steps with AMP Stories. Look at this tutorial to see how easy it is to tell beautiful stories. However, you need to provide the good content yourself.

Long gone are the days where every web developer told their customers that all relevant information had to be visible at first sight, also known as “above the fold”, as the average web user wouldn’t scroll down the page.

I can vividly remember the fights this mantra brought with it. Sticking to this concept has always been tough, if not impossible

Above the Fold: Wisdom of the Year Dot

“Above the Fold” is a concept from the early days of information transmission. Even a hundred years ago, the publishers of newspapers made sure to put the most important headline of the day above the fold, which always divided the upper and lower half of the newspaper. The concept seemed so logical, that it established itself in all areas where information was fighting for attention.

In the past, everything printed on the page not pointing towards the reader was considered less important.

Ten years ago, websites were also made following this principle wherever possible. This was even backed by the usability pope Jacob Nielsen and his studies. Advertisers used to insist on the placement of their banners above the fold, and some still do today.

Timelines Assert Themselves, Replacing the Concept

Twitter and Facebook brought us the timeline, teaching the users that they won’t only find the interesting information above the first scroll motion and that the opposite can actually be the case. Scrolling became normal, resulting in the fold becoming void.

Nowadays, UX designers should be able to assume that even sites that make the users scroll won’t end up in the nirvana of disregard. On the other hand, we still need to present our content in a way that makes users happy to give us their attention.

Thus, it only makes sense that we need to continue to communicate clearly and highly compressed. If compression to the point where only the area above the fold remains is possible, that’s even better.

Otherwise, we could take advantage of the trend of parallax scrolling. However, we continue to scroll vertically, and not horizontally. Though, we make sure that every scroll motion opens access to new information. The best way to do so is with a page-oriented design.

This basically results in slides, presentations, that always deal with different topics, while still being consumable by scrolling one single HTML page. This concept is similar to the popular One-Pagers, without it having to be an actual one-pager.

Before starting your descent into the depths of the SEO business, you should know that your design itself has a massive impact on the search engine viability. You’ll always fall short of an optimal findability if the design has been made sloppily.

No Chicken and Egg Problem: Design Came Long Before SEO

When looking at it from a historical point of view, there’s no doubt that design came first. SEO was not a thing until much later. First, we relied on the assumption that search engines, of which there was an entire pack in the nineties, would have a personal interest in filling their index. We didn’t take any special measures to be easier to find.

Then the web got fuller. Google took off, and the world’s self-proclaimed SEO experts started looking for ways to manipulate the search engine to push their sites to the top of the ranks. This resulted in SEO done for all the wrong reasons. Since then, we’ve been more or less fascinated watching a cat and mouse game. SEO will find a new way to spam. Google shuts it down. Start over.

The book on the left is the best SEO guide you can buy. (Photo: Pixabay)

Google is approaching its twentieth anniversary and has blocked most of the cheekiest and most stupid manipulation attempts for a while. Of course, it makes sense to help the search engines find your website. Google has defined options for that purpose specifically, while also explaining what a webmaster should or shouldn’t do.

But, taking a look back at the beginning of the indexing of the web, what did Google and Co. have to base their ranking on? Right, nothing but the websites created by designers. And they were already indexed back then. Huh?

Looking at it like this. SEO is a made-up category which wouldn’t be needed in a fair competition. Or, put it a bit more diplomatically: the origin of searching is not SEO, but design.

This assessment results in the importance of design for being found in search engines, something we call SEO today, giving the so-called experts a neat abbreviation for their job descriptions.

There are a lot more, and more complex technical terms in the made-up category. (Illustration: Pixabay)

Basically, planning for the criteria to be found is something that can be developed with common sense, without reading an 800-page tome on the topic.

Principle: The Best SEO is Structured, Standards-Compliant Webdesign

The web’s origin lies in the invention of HTML. This markup language adds a logical structure to content and connects it via links. Search engines simply crawl through these structures, understanding them via markers, like H1, P, and so forth. This also allows for the content to be sorted by relevance.

Then the engines follow the links, allowing them to capture the entirety of a website, as well as its embedding into the overall web structure. Logically, the search engine values the sites the more, the more external links they get, and less, if that isn’t the case.

You want it too. (Photo: Pixabay)

This applied back then, and it is still valid today. Once you’ve understood this context, you can figure out all findability contemplations by yourself. Thus, the best and most effective SEO is a standards-compliant web design that exhausts its markup options, which means actually using H1 where it makes sense, for instance.

The first SEO measure for designers is writing standards-compliant HTML. Unfortunately, it is quite common to toss away standards-compliance in favor of achieving several visual effects. This has never been recommendable, and it won’t be in the future.

Let’s see where us designers can become active.

Tip #1: Use Tags as Designated

HTML is a structured language. Sadly, some CMS, WordPress above all others, act as if we didn’t need tags, like P for paragraphs, at all. Works fine without it. This may be correct for the viewer of a site, but it contradicts the principles of the web.

Page visitors that don’t look with their eyes, naturally including the search engine crawlers, see this flaw right away, making it hard for them to correctly rank the content components.

Tip #2: Avoid Unnecessary Elements

In the end, search engines only care about content, never about looks. (I’ll get to the restrictions later on.) Thus, you should forgo design elements if they don’t directly support the content. The content deserves all the attention. Consider carefully, whether the small survey in the sidebar, the funny mini-game, or the self-playing video really support the content. If not, leave them out.

They are not just restraints during relevance rating; they could even advance to the visitor check. This results in what SEOs call a high bounce rate. The people leave shortly after entering your site. Google recognizes that, and rates it negatively.

That behavior doesn’t necessarily have something to do with the content, but could also be a result of your playful approach to the display area.

Tip #3: Make Sure to Have a Clear Link Structure

Your navigation is the most crucial element for the indexing of the website. From here, the search engine should be able to reach every other page of your website. To do so, you should keep the navigation as simple as possible, rather than bringing a complex JavaScript construct to life. Specifically to feed the search engine, XML sitemaps have been proven to be a good choice.

Make sure not to leave a page abandoned. Without links, the search engine has no way to find and index a specific page.

Links, on the other hand, should be short, but descriptive. Although Google prefers working with numeric IDs, and pretty URLs don’t seem to have any advantages in ranking anymore. However, the search engine is only one part of your target group. Humans will have an easier time dealing with descriptive URLs, and it will also be easier to memorize and associate them with the topic when seeing such URLs in Social Media channels.

Two other aspects are a part of the link hygiene. Make sure your outgoing links are functional, and replace dead links as soon as possible. Don’t make your website grow like wildfire unnecessarily. Keep it compact, with the lowest possible number of pages.

Tip #4: Use Images as Images, Buttons as Buttons, Fonts as Fonts

Images were not made to store text in them. Just because the regular visitor wouldn’t recognize this trick right away, that doesn’t mean that this wouldn’t bother the search engine either. Images always need alt tags in order for Google and Co. to have the chance to guess what the image invisible to the crawler is about. You’ll never find images without alt tags in the image search.

Images are not a good call to action either. After all, the call to action has potential to be your most important interaction element. It’s better to set it up as a button with text highlighting its importance.

Typography is essential in modern design. In the past, we could only use fonts freely as text in an image. Today, we don’t have to do this anymore. We have web fonts. In Google Fonts alone, there are over 800 font families. I’m sure everyone will find something they like.

Web fonts possibly increase the loading time of your website, but they also take off the burden of images.

Tip #5: Place Essential Meta Tags

Title and description of a website should not be underestimated. Not because of the debatable ranking advantage, but mainly because the title and description are what represents your site in the search results. Obviously, both elements should be as crisp as possible. The title should be about 70 characters long, and the description should have a maximum of 160 characters. Here, I recommend placing identified keywords of the respective site as early on in the title and description as possible.

Tip #6: Create Responsive Websites

I just want to briefly mention this one, as I don’t think anyone in this branch missed out on the “news” that Google has been including the criterion of mobile-friendliness in their ranking standards for years.

A design for many devices has many advantages. (Illustration: Pixabay)

Responsive design also comes with the benefit that every content only exists once, and the fact that the design is kept slim simply by concept. This way, you don’t have to deal with the topic of duplicate content, while maintaining the loading time in check at the same time.

Tip #7: Pay Attention to Your Website’s Performance

The faster your website loads, the better. Your visitors like this, and thus, the search engine likes it as well. By now, there are countless studies proving that visitors tend to leave websites with long loading times. A side that is left can not be very relevant, so it doesn’t deserve to be high up in the search results. At least, this is Google’s conclusion.

On the topic of performance, you’ll find a whole bunch of material on our site, like this article, for example.

And what about the content?

Content is king, right? Of course, that’s correct, and the topic of content marketing is definitely worth a couple of dedicated posts. The designer won’t really be the supplier of this content, which is why I excluded all SEO questions regarding the content topic.

Generally, though, the higher the quality of the content, the higher the ranking. Here, we would need to deal with unpleasant evolutions as the practice of SEO and their approach to content marketing is a different story. We’ll save that for another time.

Never underestimate psychology. After all, it explains pretty much all our actions.Take the following principles of design psychology to your heart.

Psychology for Designers: An Aspect That Mustn’t be Disregarded

Joe Leech, better known as Mr. Joe, should be one of the most popular evangelists of the “psychology for designers.” Leech’s customers include Disney, eBay, the Museum of Modern Arts, and the Marriott group. A few years ago, he wrote the much-noticed book “Psychology for Designers,” which he’s working on ever since. Additionally, he travels the world, hosting workshops on the topic. Leech has a clear opinion.

For Leech, a designer without a clue about the human mind resembles an architect without a clue about building physics and droop. The buildings of the latter are at high risk of collapsing, the former’s websites are at high risk of failure. According to Leech, psychology should not be viewed separately from design, as it is an essential component. Without basic knowledge of psychology, significant success in design would be impossible.

However, Leech is very down to earth and doesn’t turn the topic into rocket science. Instead, he tries to communicate the required knowledge simply and straightforwardly. Basically, as designers, all we need to know is that the human brain tends to be lazy, and prefers to work within established processes. When it comes to processing information, it will first try to take in this information in a way that it’s used to. This saves energy and helps to keep the feeling of being in control.

As a designer, this teaches us several things, like not creating innovative new processes for established tasks.

Humans are not comfortable with the feeling of losing control. (Photo: Pixabay)

The psychological approach goes much further, though. Take another look at our article on microinteractions. In there, I have proven that today, microinteractions are a vital factor when it comes to setting your website or app apart from similar ones. These microinteractions are almost exclusively about psychology.

If an app or website can be consumed comfortably, this matches the expectations of the human mind more than being confronted with a clunky, unexpected “innovation.” In this day and age, where basic functionality is provided almost everywhere, such details are what makes the difference.

On his website “Psychology for Designers,” which Leech runs in addition to his book, he collects details and information on the topic, which designers can use to dig as deep into the topic as they want to. Here, he also covers topics like the psychology of pricing, or the effects of specific images.

In the sources for further content at the bottom of this article, you’ll find enough material to dive deep into the topic of “design psychology” for hours. As not all of us have that much time, I will present guidelines based on some established principles of design psychology in the following. Consider it essential information for a good start into psychologically profound web design.

Principle #1: Don’t Invent New Approaches to Established Processes

Our brain loves treading on familiar paths. Now, if unleashed on a website, it looks for familiar patterns to help with orientation. If you’re a very innovative designer who created utterly new usage patterns for the site, the visitor’s brain won’t be thankful. Thus: don’t do it.

Not everything that’s possible makes sense… (Cartoon: Noupe)

Principle #2: Don’t Create Drastic Redesigns of Established Pages

Take a look at Google: You can still recognize reminiscences of the service’s old design of the nineties. Every redesign over the past years has been subtle and modest. Especially with such high-traffic sites, it is essential to look at the psychological aspect strategically.

Generally, everyone hates changes that don’t come with a significant improvement. Improvement is only accepted as such if there was a flaw before. Thus, the definition of the term “improvement” is in the eye of the visitor, not in the eye of the designer.

Designers, on the other hand, like to think of their redesigns as improvements, forgetting the old saying: “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” And no, just because a website doesn’t follow the hot brand-new trend, that doesn’t mean it’s broken.

Principle #3: Use the Positive Effect of High-Quality Typography

A study by Microsoftie Kevin Larson and the MIT staffer Rosalind Picard was able to prove that there’s a significant connection between a site’s typography and the mood of its readers. This realization was quite surprising to the scientists, as, previously, similar effects were only known from funny videos or small rewards. (Study as a PDF Download)

In addition to the improved mood, it was also proven that readers read longer on pages with high-quality typography, while also being able to process the information better. So, if you want to use typography psychologically, use a high-quality font without major traits and set a slightly bigger font size. And read our article on the topic.

Principle #4: Use Rewards Strategically, or Not at All

Previously, small rewards increasing the engagement of potential users was an undisputed assumption. For instance, the free trial month is almost a staple in several different offers. However, there are cases where this approach may backfire.

When you’re having fun, you don’t need any additional motivation (Photo: Pixabay)

Before working with rewards, you should identify what your user’s primary motivation is. Why would your users want to use your website or app?

Does your visitor’s primary motivation come from the inside? If they use your product for fun, to lose weight, or to communicate, rewards may not affect at all or even negatively affect the involvement.

This result is supported by this study, which isn’t even brand new but may still explain several failures of the past years. The fundamental message is the fact that rewards undermine the intrinsic motivation system, levering it out in the process.

Principle #5: Work With Human Weaknesses Proactively

Humans make mistakes, and the human brain is not very reliable. These two problems have to be approached actively in your designs. It is essential to know all possible mistakes a potential visitor could make, in order to support them. Science has shown two things.

Mistakes alone are frustrating enough to result in users quitting the usage. This is accelerated by the fact that humans tend to blame themselves for failure. And this is where a fight-or-flight reaction kicks in, regarding your website, in this case.

Another factor that most of you have heard before is a result of the statement: “I don’t know anything about computers.” Often, people even take pride in this, as if the documented inability was setting them apart from others in a positive way. This form of learned helplessness is hard to fight, but important to know. After all, the designer is a human himself.

Supporting systems can be useful, although they shouldn’t be obnoxious. Modern apps often do an excellent job at that by providing support that is often labeled as a “tour” through the app. In fact, they are just guides that don’t feel like one. Reading the manual is still considered a sign of cowardice by many.

Conclusion: Make Things as Easy as Possible, But Not Easier

“What’s next, Einstein?”, is what you might think. In reality, this is the best advice you can give designers. Summarizing all mentioned principles under the keyword “user comfort.” Make the usage of your website as comfortable as possible. While doing so, look into the above-mentioned principles now and then.

Designing an email newsletter is a task that has to be approached with multiple aspects in mind. Aesthetics are one, while marketing goals are another. We’ll show you how to cover all aspects at once.

Of course, an email newsletter has to look nice. Why? Because people prefer using pretty things. And if users with an inbox filled to the brim have the choice between opening a message with a good looking preview and one that looks as dry as the information it most likely contains, which one will they choose?

By the way, we have recently looked into the question if the email newsletter is dying, or even dead already. I’m sure you can get some additional information from this article.

Common Problems in Email Newsletter Design

Usually, email newsletters are used to turn prospects into customers. In this function, the newsletter serves as some shop window of a store in the pedestrian area. If it looks dull, the pedestrians walk past it.

With your newsletter, you have the significant advantage that potential customers have already actively decided to receive your virtual shop window in their inbox. However, you have to convince them every time. After all, the “unsubscribe” link is mandatory in some countries.

One thing that makes your life as a newsletter supplier hard are the many different email clients that your potential customers use to open their emails. Even Gmail has only recently integrated a somewhat usable HTML rendering engine. Outlook is still dreaded.

What makes this even harder is the fact that more than half of all emails are opened on a mobile device first. Thus, you can’t avoid responsiveness as a design essential. The mentioned restrictions are the reason why creativity is less critical than the technology itself when it comes to newsletter design.

Newsletter Design From a Marketing Perspective

Let’s start with the marketing aspects. Here, it is essential to identify the goal of your newsletter. Do you want to generate traffic to your website by sending out article teasers, or do you want to sell products from within your newsletter? Are you merely looking for a more personal way of communication? A mix would be connecting seemingly personal messages with selling products recommended in said messages.

Service freelancers send out information that is potentially relevant to the target group, with the goal that the recipients of the email remember the sender as a competent expert, or even ask for more in-depth information and services, based on the brief information in the newsletter.

Not all of the mentioned email newsletters can and should be created in the same way. The goal of the newsletter and the target group’s expectations should be kept in mind.

Reminder: Before you get to the design of your newsletter, you need to be as aware of its goal and the target group as possible.

Based on your goal and target group, approach the further deliberations. There are very general rules that apply here. If you can only remember two rules, or just want to use two, you should go with these:

Keep it as short as possible

Place one (or few) obvious calls to action

This should already allow you to get a success rate of about 80 percent – as long as your wording is appropriate for your goal and target group.

Reaching the right target group is crucial. (Photo: Stockvault, Jack Moreh)

Avoid too many topics. This dilutes the call to action and, in the worst case, distributes the limited attention so much that the action threshold for the individual item is not met. In that case, all of the effort put into the creation of the newsletter would have gone to waste.

Email Newsletter Design From a Design Perspective

The design aspects are subordinated to the marketing goals as well. Thus, these are not recommendations that can be made independently, regardless of the marketing aspects. Instead, many parts of the design are a result of the restrictions.

Not all email clients provide a preview of the received email from within the inbox. Often, your potential readers also have the previews turned off. In these cases, your email subject is the only element you have to convince your recipient to read the newsletter. In any case, you need a stable subject to prevent your newsletter from drowning in the stream of mail.

This is where you’ll face the question “clickbait or not.” Of course, I never recommend subjects that announce something that the newsletter does not even provide. Nonetheless, a bold wording approach should help you get your content out there.

Outlook, the dread of all email designers. (Photo: D. Petereit)

Go for strong images, as text deserts are not attractive. Don’t use just about any image, though, but go for those that support the text and the general goal of the newsletter.

However, you need to consider those users that have deactivated the display of images on purpose or automatically. The amount of these users is said to be 43 percent of all users of Gmail. Here, you should fall back to techniques such as formatted ALT attributes, that let you create the impression that it was supposed to look like this, rather than displaying empty boxes. The structured use of background colors also alleviates the effect of missing images by a lot.

What you should definitely avoid is sending out emails that only consist of images. The trend of creating email newsletters via Photoshop and then slicing them is not that long ago but has luckily gone by now.

The visual connection to your brand should be clear at all times. Even if your logo is not visible anymore, while scrolling down, the general design, including colors, division, typography, should be recognizable as the design of your brand.

Speaking of typography: in emails, we use fonts that are likely to exist on the readers’ systems and forgo those that we have to supply in some way or another. Fonts like Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Georgia, Tahoma, Lucida, Trebuchet, and Times are considered approved. 14 px for longer and 16 px for short text passages have been proven to be the optimal text size.

The concept of above the fold still applies in newsletter design. The most important information should be displayed in the window of the email client, without the user having to scroll down. In web design, over the past years, we notice that the concept is losing importance. Once you arrive at a site, you seem to be ready for scrolling. In the email client, that will be the case, too. However, you will scroll through the list of entries instead.

The effects of the attention economy also support the significance hierarchy. What you definitely want to communicate always goes at the beginning. Journalists train to exhaustion to write texts that can be shortened from the bottom on up, without damaging their central message.

Optimally, when placing links, they should only be links to your own website. SEO aspects can just be ignored here. If you have space, you should set plenty of links.

To make the newsletter perceptible as a personal message, you should not go for multi-column layouts. Naturally, an email is successful in story mode. The message is mediated from top to bottom, only interrupted by one or a few calls to action.

Nobody reads an email newsletter. Just like nobody watches American Idol and I’m a Celebrity. Nonetheless, all three formats are still very much alive. This article is only about the newsletter, which many brands still consider to be one of the most robust sales channels.

The Email is Far From Dead.

The email is an ancient service, and it already existed during the days of the Arpanet. Thus, it is no surprise that it is declared dead now and then. After all, the new is always the enemy of the old. And if the tech Taliban were in charge, the days of the good old email would be long gone. Luckily, there are other people who have a say in this; the users.

The death of the email has been predicted for a while now. (Photo: Pixabay)

Every year, the users prove that the prediction that the email was dead is wrong. The opposite is the case: the number of email accounts rises constantly. The information site “Email is not dead” quotes a study of the Radicati Group, according to which, there are more than 4,35 billion email accounts worldwide, and the number is expected to grow to 5,59 billion by 2019. That’s not what dying looks like.

McKinsey ascertained that the average employee spends 13 hours of their weekly work time working on their email inbox. Now, let’s take the increasing number of email accounts, and the average time spent in the mailbox, and the combination of the values tells us that emails allow you to reach more people more reliably than is possible via social media. Nonetheless, social media strategies are easy to sell, while email marketing always needs to be explained first.

According to McKinsey, the email is not just marginally better than social media either. In fact, the email was proven to be forty times as successful as Facebook and Twitter when it comes to the acquisition of new clients. Forrester Research also added that only about two percent of a brand’s Facebook fans see the posts within their timeline, while emails manage to reach 90 percent of the people they were sent out to; at least they make it into their inbox. With the most recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm, this value is likely to have gotten a lot worse.

This should be enough proof for us to claim that emails will still be a thing in five years from now. For some more study results, just read some of the other sources linked above. You should be able to find about 100 results there.

Email is Changing.

Email as a pure form of communication takes places in a relatively unformatted form. The bit of HTML needed to create the letterhead look is provided by all relevant email clients, with the most important ones being Outlook and Gmail.

Contemporary Design Becomes Possible

For newsletters, the pure text format was used for the longest time, making any kind of visual experience impossible. A dull page was easy to receive but rarely makes people want more.

Responsive starts to affect emails as well. (Graphic: Pixabay)

The missing design was not a result of a lack of desire for design, but only because email clients had such individual interpretations of design, that pure text was the only version that guaranteed the correct display on the reader’s screen.

Even today, email clients are not on the level of the modern browser’s rendering abilities. However, that’s what we’re slowly moving towards.

Gmail has been supporting Embedded CSS, and responsive design with Media Queriessince September of 2016, significantly increasing the display options. And recently, even Outlook, Microsoft’s email dinosaur, and the main reason our emails are made as table designs has been opening up to some more modern ways of display.

This is necessary, as we have to acknowledge that more than half (53 percent) of all emails are read on mobile devices first. Only 23 percent of all mobile users that first used an email on a mobile device will open it on a desktop device later on. That means that about 40 percent of all emails are read on mobile devices exclusively. Accordingly, they have to be designed in a way that allows for smooth consumption.

If you use a newsletter platform like MailChimp, you don’t have to care about the technology behind it. This allows for visually appealing newsletter designs. If you want to realize more complex ideas, it takes other tools to do so.

Here’s where tools like MJML or Foundation for Email 2 come into play. This lets us create our layouts in the respective template language. The frameworks take care of the rest. More elaborate animations and interaction options are also possible but require well-thought-out fallback strategies.

Overall, the integration of a fallback solution in newsletter design is even more critical than it is in web design itself. In newsletter design, fallback needs both a design and a content component, especially when it comes to e-commerce.

Email marketing still works well. (Illustration: Pixabay)

The Personalization Options are Improving

Hyper Targeting is a new buzzword in email marketing. This is what we consider the best possible adjustment of the content of an email newsletter, depending on the reader. This is not actually about a target group, but about every single reader. You should already adjust the content depending on the target group as it is.

Hyper-targeting is about collecting as many details as possible about every single newsletter subscriber, allowing for the content to be tailored to fit the reader’s specific interests. Naturally, this goes hand in hand with the highest possible conversion chance.

Machine learning will be the technological driving force. Alongside personalization and automation, there will soon be another pillar available to us to unite and improve the former ones.

Conclusion: Email Newsletters are Still Doing Very Well

Email newsletters continue to be an exciting option for client gaining, and they are also advancing regarding technology. This gets rid of their main disadvantages and allows them to build on their strengths over social media even more.

The web grows into the email marketing, leading to the homogenization of the customer approach. Modern emails can offer functions that don’t match the ones of modern websites but come close to doing so.

(The article was originally written in German language by our author Dieter Petereit for our sister magazine Dr. Web.)

Getting your visitors to engage with a form is not an easy undertaking. Yet, forms are vital for your business. Consider using JotForm Cards. Let’s go ahead and take a look at this friendly way of asking together.

JotForm: The Executive Summary

I should assume that you as a frequent Noupe reader already know JotForm from the inside out. The service is one of our favorite cloud services out there, and we have continuously covered JotForm’s evolution over the years. JotForm is a dinosaur in terms of the web. It’s been ten years since they started out on their mission to provide the world with the best form builder available. Today JotForm is proud to have more than 2.5 million users working with their product.

I found JotForm in 2014. This was the year where JotForm introduced their revamped form designer. They really got me excited that day. I wrote this article. Then, in 2016, I gathered the top six reasons why designers should use JotForm and found a service that kept getting better and better still. But all of this got topped when they released the version 4 of their service in early 2017. Since then I am in love, which led me to write this article.

JotForm Cards work on any device. (Illustration: JotForm)

With JotForm 4 there is nothing left to be desired. You’ll find the most flexible form designer on the market. Did you know that you can even build forms from your mobile device? This is only one of the groundbreaking features of JotForm 4. If you want to learn about all the tiny details that make the service great turn to the mentioned article.

JotForm Cards: Mr. Nice Guy Data Collector

So what could the good people at JotForm now make even better? I would have said, nothing. But then, this is what I said before JotForm 4 got introduced. It seems that they tend to be highly innovative. JotForm Cards proves just that.

Should you be in a hurry, at least watch this small video to get an idea of what I’ll be talking about later on in this article:

Cards Are a Designer’s Darling, And for a Reason

Cards are the new black. Any designer knows that. Card-based design has been the craze for a few years now, and it is still going strong. First introduced by social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, cards are also the native design pattern in Android’s Material Design. And they make perfect sense no matter how you look at them.

The design aspect of cards is not the most important in the context of JotForm’s latest feature. They don’t go forward stacking form cards responsively upon each other or look for the perfect grid layout.

Unprecedented fun in filling out a form. (Illustration: JotForm)

Cards in JotForm follow a way more simple concept. The content of a card is self-contained. One piece of content equals one card. That has been the reason for the introduction of cards on social media, to separate one information from the next.

Regarding usability and UX, separating information through card-based design concepts is perfectly smart. Cards are easy to handle and easy to digest. This creates a feeling of comfort and safety. The user will always know where he stands and what he is supposed to do there. A card is a great road sign.

Forms, on the other hand, are a thing that people love to avoid. Too cluttered, too long, too many questions, too sensitive questions, and poor guidance. That’s what still today characterizes most of the forms out there in the wild. Discomfort and unsafety are what gets easily associated with forms.

Now bring this together with the card-based concept of JotForm Cards and the equation works out. Sounds ingenious? It probably is…

Ask Your Questions, But One Piece at a Time

The idea behind JotForm Cards is so simple; you might wonder why no one else has had the idea already. JotForm Cards conceptually is a full-page questionnaire where you answer one question per screen, then get directed to the next.

Ultimate focus on a single question at a time. (Screenshot: JotForm)

Putting forms this way has a variety of benefits:

Cards are a familiar content unit. Users see them all day everywhere.

Cards allow you to build a design that eliminates distractions. Present your form front and center and do away with all the rest of the content that’s unneeded at the time.

The design of the form can totally be accustomed to the goal of your JotForm Card.

Available micro interactions allow for a form design that’s both clear and fun. Don’t forget the motivational effect of small UX goodies.

Showing users where they are on their form mission through your card set keeps them on track.

Unintrusive card designs are a friendly way of asking. Users are less likely to feel annoyed.

As the process is one step at a time users’ focus is not tested but supported.

With a wide array of customization options, JotForm Cards can be truly beautiful.

Especially on mobile will this way of form filling feel more natural than anything else.

Forms filled out with fun will result in a high response rate.

Should you now wonder what such a product might cost, the answer is nothing. Nothing more than you pay for JotForm anyway which can also be nothing. JotForm is still one of the few that offer a totally free plan without limiting the editing features. For the more professional needs look at this pricing table.

Now, inform yourself about what JotForm Cards might be able to achieve for you. This very contemporary interactive website will answer your questions. If you ask me, there is no better and certainly no friendlier way of asking your visitors for their valuable data. Give it a try!

According to Mueller, this is how Google actually views your URL structure regarding duplicate content:

Google’s John Mueller Clarifies. (Screenshot: Dr. Web)

It’s Pretty Simple

According to his statement, it does not matter if links to your primary domain end with a slash or not. Google recognizes that it is the exact same content, and won’t index it twice. It also does not matter if you run your domain on HTTP or HTTPS.

However, it does matter if your website works with both HTTP and HTTPS. Google considers that to be duplicate content. If, for whatever reason, you run your site on both protocols, at least place a 301-redirect from one protocol to the other, to show Google that the content is identical.

The same measure should also be used when your website is accessible via both www.mysite.com and mysite.com.

While it is irrelevant whether the primary domain ends with a slash or not, that is not the case for the following sub-structures. For instance, if your site contains a URL called mysite.com/subfolder/ and another one called mysite.com/subfolder, this counts as duplicate content. So, pay attention to consistent link placement and a correct redirection.

Generally, you should follow our tip from the article mentioned earlier, define the so-called Canonical Tag for every page of your web presence. This makes it easy for Google to see which version of your URL is the one you want to appear in the search results.

Take the five minutes and check which of the problems mentioned above affect your website. Then fix them.